Newroz: The Festival of Fire

At a Glance

Newroz means "new day" in Kurdish. It is kept on 21 March, the day night and day come out equal.
Fire stands at the centre of the festival. A fire is lit, people leap over it, they go out to the open country, they put on new clothes.
Folk telling ties the festival's origin to the legend of Kawa the blacksmith and Dehak the tyrant. The legend's written trace runs back a thousand years. The historical record is silent.
Newroz is not the Kurds' alone. From the Persians to Central Asia, it is the shared New Year of the Iranic calendar world.
Among the Kurds the festival carries one thing more: identity. That bond hardened in the ban years of the twentieth century.
Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady records that the festival can stretch across a week, and that visits during it end old quarrels.
Not every Kurdish community keeps Newroz. Dr. Izady writes that the Shikak, Begzade, and Celali tribes do not.
The Êzîdî New Year is a separate day and falls in mid-April.
UNESCO placed Nowruz on its list of humanity's intangible cultural heritage in 2009; in 2016 the file grew to twelve countries.
The United Nations declared 21 March the International Day of Nowruz in 2010.

It is the evening of 20 March. In a mountain village the wood was stacked at midday already. The children have set their new shoes beside their pillows; they will be too excited to sleep. The elder of the house strikes a match. The flame licks the brush first, then stands up toward the sky. The young men take the first leap. Then the children leap. Last of all, gathering her skirt and laughing, the grandmother leaps. Around that fire no one is a stranger tonight.

At the same hour the same fire burns elsewhere. In a square in Erbil, the main Kurdish city of northern Iraq. On a rooftop in Mahabad, over in Iran. In a street in Qamishli, in Syria. On a festival ground in Germany. These are the Kurds, one of the largest stateless peoples in the Middle East, and their New Year burns across several countries at once. The passports say different states. The flame is the same.

This article is the story of that flame. The questions are simple. What is Newroz, where does it come from, and why is it more than a spring festival?

What Does Newroz Mean?

The word is made of two parts: new, meaning new; roj or roz, meaning day. Newroz means "new day." Persians say Nowruz, Kazakhs say Nauryz, Uzbeks say Navroʻz. All of them name the same festival.

But why 21 March? On that day night and day come out equal. Astronomy calls it the equinox. After it the light lengthens a little each day. Winter's rule ends, the earth wakes. In the Iranic calendars the year begins on exactly that day.

Here let us open one word: Iranic. It names a family of languages and cultures that holds Kurdish, Persian, Balochi, and many more. It points to a family, not to the modern country of Iran. Newroz is that family's shared New Year.

The written trace is old as well. The eleventh-century scholar Biruni set the customs of Nowruz down in his book about a thousand years ago. Firdawsi's Shahnameh, the Persian book of kings, ties the festival to legendary rulers. So the record in our hands speaks of a celebration at least a thousand years old. For anything older we hold legend, not document. We will separate the two shortly.

And what do people say to one another on the day? The Kurdish is fixed: "Newroz pîroz be." May your Newroz be blessed.

How Is the Festival Kept?

Newroz is not a single night's business. Dr. Izady, in his handbook The Kurds, writes that the celebrations can spread across a week. Preparation starts days ahead. Food is cooked, sweets are made. Flowers are grown for the festival: narcissus, tulip, hyacinth. Fresh budding willow and quince branches are cut to dress the tables.

Then comes the human turn. New clothes are put on. Dr. Izady records another custom: for luck, an old pot is broken. Homes are visited, elders give gifts to the young. And the best of it: old quarrels are ended on the occasion. Let the year start clean.

Fire is the heart of the festival. In the southern and eastern regions, a few days before, fires are lit on rooftops and in the streets. The dark season is seen off, the season of light is welcomed. On 21 March people go out to the open country. Rugs are spread, food is eaten in the open air, and govend is danced, the line dance held hand to hand. Drum and shrill pipe do not fall quiet.

This scene entered literature too. Ehmedê Xanî's epic Mem û Zîn opens on a Newroz day: the young dress up, spill into the streets, and two lovers see each other there for the first time in the crowd. Even in a work written some three hundred years ago, Newroz is the day of meeting and renewal.

Today a further layer has been added. In Diyarbakır, in Istanbul, at the foot of the citadel in Erbil, in the squares of European cities, hundreds of thousands gather. Across the four parts, the Kurdish shorthand for a homeland split among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and in the diaspora, Newroz is now both festival and reunion. But is the fire in the middle of these crowds only about spring? For the answer, go first to the legend.

What Does the Legend of Kawa and Dehak Tell?

Here is the telling passed among the people. In a very old time a tyrant named Dehak held power. Two snakes had grown from his shoulders. Their pain eased only with the brains of the young. Every day young people were killed, and brains were carried to the tyrant's table. Winter fell on the land; by the telling, while Dehak ruled, spring did not come.

Kawa was a blacksmith. He had given his children to this cruelty. One day he set down his anvil, took up his hammer, and marched to the palace. The tyrant's end came by that hammer. The news spread over the mountains with fires: hilltop to hilltop, flame to flame. Whoever saw the fire understood that the cruelty was over. The next day spring came. The Newroz fire is the memory of that fire of news.

The legend's written trace is old. In Firdawsi's Shahnameh, dated to about 1010, there is Dehak, and there is the smith. There the smith is named Kaveh, and his leather apron becomes a banner. So this telling has moved through written culture for at least a thousand years. Kurdish oral tradition tells it in its own tongue, with its own mountains.

But what does history say? The document is silent. There is no historical record that a king named Dehak lived. No archaeologist has held Kawa's hammer. Does that make the legend worthless? It does not. The legend carries a people's memory of cruelty and rescue; it speaks in the language of symbol. Respect for a legend begins with not mistaking it for a document. In this article the telling stands as folk telling, and the document as document.

Is Newroz Only a Kurdish Festival?

It is not, and this must be said plainly. On 21 March the tables are set in Tehran. There is celebration in Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif. In Dushanbe, in Samarkand, in Baku, in Almaty, the year begins on that day. The Soviet Union suppressed these celebrations for long years; Dr. Izady records that with the union's collapse the peoples returned to the festival in 1991. Newroz is the shared inheritance of the Iranic calendar world and of the neighbouring peoples it touched.

On the Kurdish side the picture is not uniform either. Dr. Izady's note is clear: large tribes such as the Shikak, Begzade, and Celali do not keep Newroz; they lean on the religious festivals instead. The writer Musa Anter, in his memoirs published in 1990, adds a curious note: in some villages the New Year is kept on 13 January. Dr. Izady writes that this January New Year is linked to the Êzîdî calendar tradition. The Êzîdî New Year is itself a separate day: kept in mid-April, on a Wednesday. We told that festival's story in our article on the Yazidis.

This many-peopled quality took an international seal in the 2000s. UNESCO, the culture body of the United Nations, wrote Nowruz onto the representative list of humanity's intangible cultural heritage in 2009. The file belonged to no single state; it was the joint application of several. In 2016 it was widened, and today it is the shared record of twelve countries: among them Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Central Asian republics. The United Nations General Assembly also declared 21 March the International Day of Nowruz in 2010. Let one detail not slip past: these files are prepared through states, and the lists carry country names. The names of stateless peoples do not appear on them. Their fires burn all the same.

So how is it that a festival kept everywhere is bound up so closely with the Kurds? The difference lies in the meaning the festival is asked to carry. For Persians, Nowruz is the New Year, in the state calendar, a festival of the table. For Kurds, Newroz is the New Year too, but with more: a symbol of rescue joined to the tale of Kawa, and, in the twentieth century, identity itself. A festival, once its celebration is forbidden, turns into something else. Let us look at those years.

The Ban Years: How Did a Festival Become an Identity?

The twentieth century treated Newroz differently from country to country. In Iran the festival was the state's own; keeping it was no trouble. In Iraq Newroz became an official holiday. In Syria it was not officially recognized but was kept; Dr. Izady notes reports that celebrants were harassed at times. In the Soviet Union, like all local festivals, Newroz was suppressed, and it returned openly only in 1991.

The hardest picture was in Turkey. Dr. Izady's record is plain: the Kurdish festivals were banned by state law, and fire was at times opened on those who kept them in defiance. In the early 1990s some Newroz days ended in death; those events entered the human rights reports of the period. The ban reached down to a single letter: even spelling the festival's name with a w could become a court case, because that letter was outlawed from the Turkish alphabet. From the mid-1990s the state took the festival into its own official calendar, this time under the spelling "Nevruz"; the name and its spelling have been a separate argument ever since.

The result was the opposite of what the ban intended. When celebration was forbidden, lighting a fire became a statement. People gathered around the flame to say, we are here. The festival became the calendar day of an identity's resistance. In the memory of the hundreds of thousands who fill the squares today, both the spring and those years stand together.

Is that turn surprising? Think about it. What does a people do when its festival is taken from it, if not hold it closer?

What Does the Fire Say?

What put fire at the centre of this festival? The answer comes in layers.

The oldest layer is seasonal. Fire says the dark season has ended and the light has returned. Dr. Izady writes that the festival fire sees off the dark winter and welcomes the bright spring. This layer is shared across the whole Iranic world. Persians leap over fire on the last Tuesday of the year; that night is called Chaharshanbe Suri.

The second layer is cleansing. Whoever leaps the fire leaves his trouble and his weight in the flame; so the belief runs. The new year is entered light. In the northern regions there is another tradition of light: on the night of Tuldân two lamps are lit and kept burning until morning. In folk belief Xidir, a wandering figure who brings plenty and health, walks the houses that night; the light keeps the door open to him.

The third layer is news. In the tale of Kawa the fire is the news of rescue carried mountain to mountain. For that reason the Newroz fire does not only warm, it calls. Whoever lights it has said something to whoever sees it.

And the last layer is memory. Like every festival that has passed through ban years, Newroz now tells its own history too. The child who listens to a grandfather's story by the fire learns, along with the spring, one more thing: this flame was not easy to light.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Newroz celebrated? The main day is 21 March; in most places the fires are lit on the evening of 20 March. Dr. Izady records that the celebrations can spread across as much as a week.

Are Newroz and Nowruz the same festival? They are the same festival said differently. In Kurdish it is Newroz, in Persian Nowruz, in Kazakh Nauryz. The meaning is the same in all: new day. In the Kurdish context the Newroz spelling has also been a matter of identity.

Is the legend of Kawa and Dehak historically true? The historical documents in our hands do not confirm such a king and a smith. The legend's literary trace, though, is at least a thousand years old; it appears in the Shahnameh. The legend carries memory, not documentation, and that is where its value lies.

When did UNESCO list Newroz? Nowruz entered the representative list of humanity's intangible cultural heritage in 2009. In 2016 the file was widened and became the shared record of twelve countries. The United Nations also declared 21 March the International Day of Nowruz in 2010.

Does every Kurd keep Newroz? No. Dr. Izady writes that the Shikak, Begzade, and Celali tribes do not keep the festival. The Êzîdî New Year is separate too and falls in April. Even so, Newroz is the most widespread common day among the Kurds.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources (from the Bedel Boseli Collection):

Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook (4th edition); the "Festivals, Ceremonies, & Calendar" chapter: celebration customs, regional differences, Tuldân, and the records of the ban period.
The memoirs of Musa Anter (Istanbul, 1990); the note on the 13 January New Year that Dr. Izady relays.

Social Media Summaries

The following summaries are ready to share; copy and use them.

Picture a festival: banned some years, filling the squares with hundreds of thousands in others. Newroz begins with fire and continues with identity. The full story of 21 March: bedelboseli.com/en/newroz-festival-of-fire
A tyrant with two snakes at his shoulders, a blacksmith taking up his hammer, and fire spreading mountain to mountain. So the folk telling runs; the document is silent. Where legend and history part: bedelboseli.com/en/newroz-festival-of-fire
Nowruz entered UNESCO's heritage of humanity list in 2009; in 2016 the file grew to twelve countries. The lists carry state names; the peoples keep the fire alive: bedelboseli.com/en/newroz-festival-of-fire
On the same day the table is set in Tehran, there is celebration in Samarkand, the fire burns in Diyarbakır. Newroz belongs not to one people but to a calendar world. The Kurdish difference: bedelboseli.com/en/newroz-festival-of-fire
There was a time when a single letter in the festival's name could be a court case: the w. Today millions stand around the same fire. The festival the bans made larger, Newroz: bedelboseli.com/en/newroz-festival-of-fire